Cover Picture: Identification of Drugs Inducing Phospholipidosis by Novel in vitro Data (ChemMedChem 11/2012)

Drug-induced phospholipidosis may be associated with undesirable clinical side effects, and its relationship with drug toxicity remains unclear. A means to predict the phenomenon would have significant clinical utility. The front cover picture shows that drugs such as amitripyline (left panel) elevate cellular phospholipid levels significantly, even when applied in moderate concentrations. The effect on the cells can be visualized by fluorescence microscopy (right panel). In vitro experiments identified several well-known and widely used drugs that induce phospholipidosis. Based on these results, an in silico model was built in an attempt to predict whether a novel therapeutic agent might induce phospholipidosis in cells. For more details, see the Full Paper by Johannes Kornhuber et al. on p. 1925 ff. Background image: iStockphoto.com/FotografiaBasica